They are colleagues, and both were born in Transylvania. One heads a doctoral school in theatre arts in Târgu Mureș, the other leads a theatre company in Budapest. But both are actors as well. And both can speak passionately about acting. In Telephone Conversation, we invite artists to ask a colleague living far away from them to join them for a professional exchange.

Conversation conducted and edited by Lilla Proics.

Erzsébet B. Fülöp: I would like to talk to you about presence, and about putting it at risk—the kind of madness in the best sense of the word that is also so characteristic of you. How can an actor’s presence be stimulated?

Zoltán Balázs: Through personal discoveries. Through the momentary risk inherent in the dual experience of flying and falling. This is why I find the courage and sense of responsibility of circus performers so inspiring. They cannot be at the mercy of their mood on a given day, because an inaccurately executed sequence of movements could cost their partner their life.

Actors, on the other hand, have countless opportunities to bluff. A sea of instinct, a drop of consciousness. The acting profession, if it is not deliberately maintained, can very quickly become schematic, mannered, and devoid of character. Expressions without individuality or intention cannot create the conditions for that particular spark to emerge every time. If the energy of communication lacks personal motivation, there is no discharge.

Ideally, a kind of give-and-take should emerge in which the actor-medium embodying the character is equally capable of representing the author’s intentions, the director’s concept, and their own ideas. It is important to attempt to assert independent thoughts and consciously embraced emotions at every moment of both the rehearsal and the performance. This effort most authentically validates the immediacy of impulses arising in the present and the possibility of making the most of the moments of awareness contained within the present moment.

If this process lacks personal motives and content, if it is not built on one’s own experiences and avoids conflict, then it cannot elicit unexpected, impulsive, and provocative stimuli from one’s partner. Sovereign stage presence based on extreme forms of expression holds enormous possibilities, but only a few people dare to make use of them, because the risk factor inherent in it greatly threatens the “artistic self-awareness” built up through hard work.

EBF: What bothers me about current definitions is that they are formulated from the perspective of the recipient rather than the actor. Although there are numerous definitions, according to Erika Fischer-Lichte’s categorisation there are three types of presence. The first corresponds to the weak concept of presence, when the actor is simply there. The second level is the strong concept of presence, when the actor is present intensely, dominating the space. And the third is radical presence, when the energy circulates with such intensity that it draws in the spectator; actor and spectator become one within this extremely powerful presence. According to the system above, this is the highest level of presence.

As a director, do you perceive this, and how can you stimulate it? And I am returning to the concept of risk because, in my work, I do not experience every director as leaving the actor that opening in which they can take risks.

ZB: What exactly is missing for you as an actor that would allow you to be present more riskily in a rehearsal process?

EBF: Freedom. I am missing the freedom of the actor, which I continue to look for even when certain directors send me from A to B and then from B to C. But there is a type of director—and now I am talking about my favourite kind of director—who sends me from A to B with a good instruction, leaving me the possibility of getting to B without specifying how I should get there, thereby leaving the execution entirely up to me. They trust me not to play beneath the score and to deliver the expected standard.

ZB: That works when the foundations are strong and there is a common vocabulary. If the director devotes time and energy to familiarising the actors with the rules of the game for the particular rehearsal process, with the conceptual and practical toolkit associated with the production in preparation, then a common denominator can be established effectively and economically. The artists’ talent and creativity can be focused in the same direction during rehearsals, and within the performance created along the mutually established coordinates, they can experience enormous freedom.

If, however, the framework is not sufficiently precise, the actors become uncertain and are forced to shape it themselves from one evening to the next. Their attention is no longer focused on what really matters, and therefore they cannot fully unfold.

Actors can fly when, as part of their development, the conditions necessary for flight are provided during the rehearsal process. This is why it is more difficult for me to create performances that emerge from one-off encounters: I simply do not have enough time to establish the preliminary points of reference.

In order, as a concept-driven director, to make visible those invisible dimensions hidden within a more complex playwright’s work, I have to dismantle a great many ingrained acting habits and replace them with valid points of reference that offer different approaches and new challenges. This requires an extraordinary nervous system, patience, and a sense of humour.

When actors cannot find anything to hold on to at all and are therefore at their most vulnerable, the director has to step back intelligently and sensitively, redesigning the process and integrating new tools into it. If, in such a situation, the director is capable of behaving empathetically, letting go of the pressure to conform and perform that comes with the leadership role, and activating a relaxed form of all-encompassing attention, then the actors will give space to the fragile, creative part of their artistic personality.

EBF: You call it a relaxed form of attention; I call it soft focus, following Strasberg or David Singer. How many different zones of attention do you distinguish among your actors?

ZB: Countless ones. Let us start with the suspicious actor, who always receives the words of the person directing them with reservations. The director has to gradually tame the bristling sense of self-importance in such an artist.

I must never forget that I am dealing with a sovereign creator who has to satisfy a great many of my colleagues simultaneously: the dramaturg, the composer, the choreographer, the set and costume designers. And ultimately, the audience of the moment. And they are right to expect me to win their trust with personalised instructions that are useful in practice.

It is up to me how I capture their attention, then retain it and inspire their work. What kind of communication strategy I use to establish our creative dialogue, built on loyalty.

Throughout theatre history, numerous theatre-makers have tried to synchronise this delicate process, but none of them has found the one universally valid solution. You have also mentioned several theatre scholars who categorise actors’ attention according to individual criteria, but they cannot offer guidance that applies to everyone either.

The director has to assess for themselves what level of experience their actors have reached and how complex their interests and education are. Once this map has been drawn, the director can tailor their instructions to individual personalities.

“Boundary-crossing gestures” formulated in the spirit of mutual trust can be particularly liberating, because at such moments the actor can be entrusted not only with solutions concerning content, but also with suggestions concerning form.

EBF: Many actors talk about how the rehearsal process, the exploratory phase, is more important to them than the finished product...

ZB: Forgive me for interrupting, but for me the term “finished product” is meaningless in a theatrical context. The premiere is just as much an opportunity for artists to encounter themselves as any day of the rehearsal period or any subsequent performance. Something does not come to an end—it begins.

It is precisely the pressure of the “finished product” that makes most rehearsal processes tense and rigid, which is why actors focus their entire nervous system on a single red-letter event. The ability to redesign—I use this term for the quality that is also closely connected to stimulation—provides a renewed opportunity for the actor not to panic when something does not turn out as planned.

But for that, they need to know precisely what tools are available for turning a changed situation to their advantage.

EBF: It must be easy to be an actor with you and, say, to receive a risky task every time while performing in Yvonne. I only read about it, because unfortunately I did not see the production, but I thought the idea of involving the audience in this way was brilliant, because it stimulates the actor’s presence.

It really is risky: what answers will the audience give, how will the actor react, while still having to perform the score from one evening to the next? I start from the premise that simply being there is not yet the kind of presence we are talking about, just as an athlete cannot maintain their attentional apparatus constantly, because what they have to pay attention to is constantly and unpredictably changing.

That is why I assume that presence can be categorised. Sometimes it is stronger, more intense; sometimes it diminishes. And obviously it can be generated and stimulated—which means that presence can also be restored during a performance, and it can be taught.

In my book I wrote about four categories, but I have continued to think about whether I was right to establish them. For example, whether weak presence requires repeated activation of the attentional apparatus—the actor has to return to the inner theme and the external stimulus.

ZB: You mean it has to become a reflex, or a routine, like having your morning coffee?

EBF: No. If, during a performance, for example as Arkadina, I feel that I am at a weak level of presence, I try continuously to analyse both the external and internal stimuli selectively. So, for instance, in Act III, I recall my greatest fear: that Trigorin is going to leave me. At the same time, I take into account the external reactions coming from Trigorin, and immediately I am back in the presence: He is going to leave me soon. I can see it on him. He isn’t looking at me, and so on.

I repeat this thought to myself and try to find feelings and movements that correspond to it, so my external and internal attention are constantly oscillating. This self-generated focus can strengthen presence.

Then there is a third category—which I think has occurred to me only about five times in my entire acting life—which I call integrated presence, because of the integrated attentional apparatus. This is the highest attentional zone, when I enter some kind of trance, or cease to exist as the external and internal attentional apparatuses merge.

Fischer-Lichte says that in this state you become embodied. You do not transform your body into the character, because there is no effort involved. You simply are the presence, the character, and the spectator also enters into it through you. Fischer-Lichte says that this generates a state of happiness both in you and in the audience.

ZB: Robert Wilson truly enjoys actors’ presence on stage when they are able to pay attention like a cat preparing to pounce, or like a dog pricking up its ears in response to stimuli from its surroundings—ready to move, ready for action.

An actor is not only a person endowed with instincts, but also with consciousness and spirit, someone capable of operating themselves in a complex way. The only question is: what kind of personality are they putting into motion when they lend their entire being to the creation of a role?

Until I met Tim Carroll and encountered the kind of stage interpretation of Hamlet that Tim revealed to me during the rehearsals for the Bárka production, I too regarded acting as something like a striking costume that I could parade around in during the performance and then hang on a peg in the dressing room afterwards.

This was also partly due to the great actors of the past, who often spoke about the sanctity of transformation and about “getting under the skin of the character” every evening. I never found myself in that approach as an actor, but at the beginning of my career it floated before me as an achievement to admire and imitate, because thousands of artists in Hungarian theatre had previously practised this form of representational acting with great success.

Fortunately, I met Tim Carroll after I had already been influenced in Paris by the thinking of several masters who did not represent realist or naturalist acting.

I agreed to play Hamlet when I understood the essence of Tim’s concept, which could not be compared to any previous interpretation of Hamlet. As Zoltán Balázs, I was entrusted with thinking through the problems of the character of Hamlet in front of the audience at every performance. I was to examine, with arguments and counterarguments, the questions with which Shakespeare had been confronting his character Hamlet for four hundred years.

During rehearsals, we sought to gain an overview and understanding of the complex set of problems occupying the Danish prince. In this way, I was able to arrive at countless valid interpretations of Hamlet and—with the right to change my mind—could participate in the story sometimes as a boy, sometimes as an adult, sometimes as an angry and arrogant heir to the throne, and at other times as a weak and vulnerable young man.

Of the insights I gained during rehearsals and performances, two defining encounters radically changed my previous relationship to stage presence.

During the first performance, before the “To be or not to be” soliloquy, I thought I would look up through the hole in the centre of the canvas stretched above the playing area and discuss my situation with God: whether there was any point in living or not.

I began the soliloquy, but I felt that I was horribly off target, speaking theatrically and falsely. I knew what I wanted to express and whom I was addressing, but I could hear myself from the outside, and I quickly became conscious of the second-rate quality of my presence.

I knew I should stop because it was getting worse and worse, but the voice of my professional actor-self advised me to continue: The audience has paid for their tickets, the show must go on.

But my personal self whispered: You know you are lying. You are speaking falsely. Your intentions are not clear, and you have failed to establish a connection with the person you are addressing.

And then, Bözse, I don’t know why, but it burst out of me:

“Excuse me, I’ll start again!”

You can imagine how enormous the silence was.

And immediately there was another problem. Fine, I’ll start again—but what if I am even worse the second time than I was before? What if I am less able to concentrate, and I cannot focus my nervous system in such a way that I am truly personal, sincere, purposeful, and free of theatrical devices?

EBF: May I guess?

ZB: Of course.

EBF: You succeeded the second time.

ZB: I did. But there was no guarantee.

EBF: You know what the guarantee is? That you surprise yourself. You surprise your mind, and at such a moment you are capable of surprising the mental comfort zone that constantly wants to monitor you and channel you into a particular course. You can stimulate yourself with something unexpected. You see? You discovered it.

ZB: And yet the risk is enormous. It is easy to think of something, but it is not necessarily possible—or necessary—to carry it out. Some people like the fact that I try again, but others are outraged and object to the idea that I am using their money to refine the sound of my authentic voice.

The spectator is perfectly justified in thinking: The gentleman actor should kindly play Hamlet, and that’s it!

My experiment was, incidentally, a great success; the audience appreciated the special moment. I think I was so desperate that I would fail again that my hopelessness activated a previously unknown part of myself. I lent Hamlet my own desperation; my helplessness gave him credibility.

During another performance, before the armies of Fortinbras passed through, I asked the audience for two minutes of silence because I was terribly exhausted. After that, I built the soliloquy up from nothing, word by word:

“Every... occasion... accuses... me...”

It was difficult to reconstruct myself, but eventually an extraordinarily personal train of thought emerged from me. I, Zoli Balázs, publicly rearranged my intentions. The audience greatly appreciated it.

Certain colleagues were less enthusiastic, because they felt that, as an unreliable, rebellious, anarchistic actor, I had taken over the performance... And they were justified in resenting me.

After the performance, I went home ashamed, thinking that I would resign the next day because you simply cannot do such a thing—it is amateurish.

Then I began to understand something: I had become exhausted because I had seriously engaged with Hamlet’s problems and completely surrendered myself to him. The obsessive investigation into real and imagined events had consumed my entire being.

Naturally, my mental capacity became depleted, and I ran myself down like children do after they have cried themselves to sleep. Hamlet’s exhaustion was validated by my own fatigue.

This experience later gave birth to the production Leonce and Lena, which, through my actors, demonstrated the enormous power of the symbiotic duality of the personal self and the creative self. That was when I began consciously exploring the actor’s dual nature.

EBF: But you see, to return once again to the possibility of stimulating presence, the director gave you free rein, so you were able to take risks. You did not always have to get from A to B in exactly the same way; your freedom remained intact. And presumably you understood each other extremely well for him to entrust the role to you to such an extent.

And you also discovered within yourself that you can indeed be stimulated by stepping outside the score—whether through a sudden movement or simply by saying, “I’m sorry, I’m exhausted.” Look: it is possible to stop in the middle of a role and say that you need to pull yourself together.

I have been thinking about this since the pandemic began—how theatre should be made. And then it turned out: there is no special answer. The same way as always.

ZB: Just don’t tell me we need to make quarantine theatre...

EBF: I’m saying that it has to be done in exactly the same way: with the same faith, dedication, and embodiment.

ZB: Only those who carry these fundamental qualities by nature, instinctively, are capable of that. If someone doesn’t have them, you can tell them all you like about passion and faith...

How do you stimulate people who think differently from you about the creative processes of theatre?

EBF: The actor is responsible for their own awareness, their self-censorship, and their own ability to be stimulated—for being aware of their own energy level before every performance.

Breathing exercises can help with this. I admit that there are performances... Especially when I have had a busy day and arrive at the theatre extremely tired. Then I have to help myself, perhaps with a breathing exercise or another method, a physical conditioning exercise that raises my energy level.

So far, there have been only five performances in which I have experienced that kind of integrated attentional zone—what László F. Földényi describes in relation to literature as a vertical attentional apparatus—in which the external and internal merge.

I had a powerful experience with Lilla Proics during one of those five performances, and I also wrote about it in my book. At the Thealter Festival, we performed Bread in the Pocket, and I had to begin the performance with silence. I was supposed to speak when I felt that I had the audience’s maximum attention.

And for some reason, I thought I would try Master Zeami’s advice: to sense the audience with the voice of the heart.

And something incredible happened. Lilla’s review captured it perfectly—I have never experienced a critic joining me so completely in an experiment. She wrote about a state of theatrical zazen.

I was terribly frightened, by the way, because the moment expanded and I lost my sense of theatrical time. After the performance, I could hardly wait to ask Éva Patkó how many minutes later than usual I had begun. I thought it must have been at least twenty, but it turned out to have been only two or three minutes.

I experienced something like a newly constituted sense of time that had never happened to me on stage before. Afterwards, I thought a great deal about the fact that an actor works with two kinds of attentional apparatus.

Have you ever experienced this?

ZB: Yes, I have come close to a similar kind of subjective-objective awareness. When Tim Carroll invited me to play Hamlet, he told me that, beyond my acting instincts, he would also need my director’s brain. He needed me always to be ten steps ahead of the situation and the other actors.

As Hamlet, I had to be an organising force within a constantly changing, fluid performance that was not based on fixed scenes and precisely defined coordinates.

This conscious and unconscious duality organised and shaped my identification processes at the time, and it is something I still strive for as a director today.

It is extraordinarily exciting to think through all of this together with an artist like you: someone who not only experiences and puts into words the insights gained through theatre, but also continues to investigate them as an ever-renewing artist and passes them on as a teacher.

Lilla Proics, szinhaz.net, 2022

translated by Zsuzsanna Juraszek